The convergence of computing and entertainment continues to provide new content and options for consumers. For example, cable subscribers can now access cable television programs and video-on-demand content (VOD) through their set-top boxes. In one offering, video-on-demand service allows a user to select a program for viewing from a library of programs, wherein all of the programs are available at any time and can be paused, saved, reviewed, etc. (as opposed to a cable television program that is only available at a scheduled time and duration). Other sources of content may also exist, including content from a media library, an Internet Protocol (IP) stream, a Web site, etc.
Consumers and content providers can find great benefit in the availability of content from so many different types of sources. For example, a consumer can view a rerun episode of a cable television program and then search for and view a subsequent episode of the same program over VOD or some other content providing channel. For their part, content providers can keep people “tuned in” with a wider assortment of content and content types.
Listings of available programs for a given content source are generated from discovery data (e.g., catalogs of available programming). However, existing approaches for presenting a user with choices of available content from various sources fail to provide a synergistic interface through which to access discovery data for such content. Instead, existing approaches isolate the discovery data for content of each source from the discovery data for content of all other sources. For example, a typical electronic program guide (EPG) provides cable television listings through one interface and video-on-demand content listings through a separate and distinct interface. As such, the discovery interfaces for such content provide no relationships, interactions, or cohesive user experience among content of different sources.
In addition, exhaustively adding extensive volumes of media content available to an existing electronic programming guide would quickly overwhelm the electronic programming guide and make it useless as a tool for a user.
These limitations, therefore, make it more difficult for a consumer to find the content in which they are interested and make it more difficult for a content provider to maintain the consumer's attention.